Category: Home Ed Horror Stories

Read Linda Dobson’s post on the Canary in the mine. Her blog is called: Parent At The Helm.

England has always been a little more hostile towards home education than the U. S. They just can’t believe that there are any non-credentialed person can possibly teach anything to anyone over there.

The attitude aside, what is happening over there is very likely to begin happening over here. I’m specifically speaking to the fact that representatives in government at all levels, are taking less and less advice from the people they represent. It doesn’t matter what We The People think about how we should be governed, it’s coming down to We The Elite know what’s best for You the (little) People.

We have one recent case where two moms were charged and found guilty of educational neglect for not filling out an attendance sheet (Yeah, I know there’s more to the story, but no one is tellin’ it.) and the new cries for legislation and regulation are going to roll on from there.

Like this:

Good Grief! The Journal Gazette reported last month that two mothers and their children were indentured into slavery to their public government school (for failing to keep attendance while they homeschooled) and now the second salvo has been shot across the bow.

Like this:

We learned in an earlier post that some people believe laws encouraging freedom and liberty, are actually dangerous to … the children. To put it in the context of homeschooling, I will quote from the article on www.detnews.com:

Michigan has one of the most lenient home school laws in the nation, giving tens of thousands of families the freedom to teach their children in the manner they want without government interference. But timid and sporadic enforcement of the law’s minimal requirements has been exploited by some unscrupulous parents hiding abuse or educational neglect.

In other words… parents who say they are homeschooling are more likely to abuse their children since their children are not under the supervision of the State for most of their childhoods.

Did the article mention that these parents have been under investigation for a long time? Nope. Wonder why? Me too.

Because the state is barred from collecting any data on home school students, it’s impossible to know how many parents may be abusing the law or how well those students are doing academically.

Does anyone with a brain cell agree with me that it’s asinine to think that “collecting data” on families will deter abuse and violence against one’s own children? I know… CPS does an awesome job already.

But at least two deaths can be traced to parents pulling their children from public schools to squelch abuse complaints, authorities say. In both cases, parents claimed they were home schooling their children despite having no books or educational materials in their homes.

READ THAT AGAIN!! Two deaths related to pulling children away from the Government Schools! I will give $10 to anyone who can determine that Child Protective Services was NOT already involved in the lives of the family of the dead children.

You can quote me on this one:

…on a per capita basis, your children are thousands of times less likely to be assaulted, raped, abused and even killed, while in your home(school) than children under the care of their Government School.

This is insane! There were allegedly already “abuse complaints” filed somewhere, and then the parents yank the kids out of school. So… what? They get some get-out-of-school card that gives them sudden permission to void all pending inquiries by the state? Lunacy!!

Others have used home schooling as an excuse to keep children at home to care for younger siblings or ailing parents, without providing any educational materials.

NO CITATIONS OF FACTS OR WITNESSES TO SUPPORT THIS ASSERTION.

Just what can be done in such cases — and who can do it — is so unclear that some officials call a false claim of home schooling a “get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“As long as home schooling is as lax as it is,” said Charlotte Smith, a state Office of Children’s Ombudsman intake officer, “it’s an avenue for parents to hide abuse.”

I AM ABSOLUTELY GOING TO EXPLODE! Some officials say that reading ignorant news articles like this can cause medical emergencies and outbreaks of heavy drinking. Really. It’s true!

In 20 years, Michigan has moved from some of the most restrictive home school laws to among the most lenient. There are no instruction-time requirements, no curriculum standards, no minimum education level for the teachers and no testing.

And as we have learned… Michigan cities like Detroit have some of the worse public schools in the nation. So how is all that red tape and curriculum standards working out for you all? Pretty awesome, if you go by all of the photographers who are using Detroit as the super-model of urban decay photo essay subjects. Catch some more examples of these monuments to the failed Government Education Complex, here.

That freedom has fueled an explosion of Michigan home schools, with an estimated 72,000 children now learning at home.

Did you know that the Indiana DOE thinks there are around 23,000 homeschoolers in Indiana? Would it bother you to know that in reality, it could be as high as 80,000? What difference does this make? It only points out that on a per capita basis, your children are thousands of times less likely to be assaulted, raped, abused and even killed, while in your home(school) than children under the care of their compulsory Government School. How’s that for a factoid?

Why are government officials all of a sudden so worried about FREEDOM? All this “freedom” caused an explosion of homeschooling? How about all this educational slavery finally caused parents to wake up and to seek out alternative educational options.

Just sayin’.

__________
During the past year [2005], 7.9% of students nationwide had been threatened or injured with a weapon (gun, knife, or club) on school property one or more times.2005 CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance

If Indiana Homeschoolers were experiencing the same kinds of violence, that would mean (assuming there were 40,000 homeschoolers in Indiana) over 3,160 homeschoolers are allegedly experiencing the kinds of violence and “abuse” that close to 800,000 Hoosier Public Schoolers experience (for a fact) every year in those protective institutions we call Schools.

Like this:

More on this later. Just once again, this kind of stuff does nothing but diss the homeschooling community so as to avoid pointing to the REAL problem: the failure of anything government to deal with problems in society. If putting more children in public institutions called schools could help… then 97% of the school going population would be peachy keen.